Everyone from New York, or anyone who has been, will tell you how beautiful and loved Central Park is. This massive park, nearly 850 acres, sits in the middle of one of the world’s most expensive and popular cities, and no one questions its existence. Every square meter is valuable. We accept, instinctively, that this patch of nature must remain untouched because it offers so much to the millions who live around or visit each year.
So, when Farwiza Farhan asked, “No one would claim we could redraw the borders of Central Park to build more buildings. How do we allow that line to be redrawn everywhere else in the world?” the question lingered in my mind. Farwiza was pointing to a quite injustice, the difference between the landscapes society chooses to protect and those allowed to be exploited. Forests in Indonesia, rivers in Zambia, and mineral-rich lands in the Democratic Republic of Congo are continuously rezoned, mined and polluted with no regard for the communities that call them home. These same places carry long shadows of colonial extraction.
Patience Mususa reminded us that it is not by accident, but legacies. The minerals driving green transition and digitalisation- cobalt, copper, manganese and lithium- lie along colonial-era extraction routes. Demand for these minerals is expected to rise to 235% by 2050, yet the communities living on this land face polluted rivers, crumbling infrastructure, fewer public services and deep historical inequalities. Patience described a key river in Zambia so polluted that locals who depended on it could no longer use it, while corporate narratives framed clean up as “punitive”, as though restoring the river were a burden rather than a responsibility.
Farwiza’s work in Indonesia’s Leuser ecosystem, one of the last places on Earth where critically endangered megafauna still roam together in the wild, conservationists have often excluded the very people who have protected the land for generations, while the real danger is the belief that economic growth requires exploiting landscapes and displacing communities. Michael also reminded us that terms like “green growth”, “nature positive”, and even “abundance” remain shallow if they do not challenge underlying assumptions. A green future is not green if it comes at the cost of people and ecosystems. A just transition must reckon with these complex histories of extraction and displacement, rather than repeating them.
The speakers argued that abundance is not about accumulation; it is about sharing. It was interesting to hear Patience talk about traditions in which having plenty comes with responsibility: if you have more, you give more; if you live in a place, you treat it with moderation and care; if harm is done, you restore it. If we embrace this ethic, we can imagine a new story for people and the planet, one in which every square meter, every river, forest, and community- not as disposable, but as sacred. A just transition begins there, it is about reinvesting extraction revenues into communities, restoring ecosystems and honouring the people who protect the land simply by living in it. It starts by honouring that every landscape, like Central Park, has inherent value. Only then can we tell a new story for people and the planet, one where abundance truly means sharing.